December 17, 2022

It’s scarf weather. I have many but my current favorite is one I purchased in Doolin last year. Cashmere. I love it. However last spring I noticed that it was pilling. My mother would be horrified and I could hear her voice telling me to resolve this issue. So when I was in Doolin I visited the Ekotree knitting factory and talked with Diarmud. Did he have a solution?

Well, he did. He ascended the spiral staircase to the upper floor and returned with a small comb in a bag. As he handed it to me, gratis as I’m a frequent customer and bring others, he told me that pilling was the natural condition of cashmere. And he suggested that I might consider living with the pills. “It’s what cashmere does,” he said.

Indeed. I had purchased cashmere and expected it not to act like cashmere. I embraced the natural fiber but not the nature of fiber. How many times do I do this in my life? Welcoming the natural world and then resisting the natural wildness of it seems a bit of a human pattern. And it took a scarf to remind me. I do still have that comb but it remains in the bag. There’s actually a relief in knowing I will not comb that lovely scarf into oblivion over time. Knowing our relationship will last for many years, this scarf and I each dancing our own nature and natural aging process, warms my body and soul.

Wool wisdom. How lovely.

Beannacht,
Judith